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Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Review: Harm by Hugh Fraser

A
debut crime novel by Hugh Fraser.

‘What
makes an innocent girl become a contract killer?’

Acapulco
1974: Rina Walker is on assignment. Just another another quick,
clean kill. She
wakes to discover her employer’s severed head on her bedside
table, and a man with an AK 47 coming through the door of her
hotel room. She needs all her skills to neutralise her attacker
and escape. After a car chase, she is captured by a Mexican drug
boss who needs her radiant beauty and ruthless expertise to
eliminate an inconvenient member of the government.

Notting
Hill 1956: Fifteen-year-old Rina is scavenging and stealing to
support her siblings and her alcoholic mother. When a local
gangster attacks her younger sister, Rina wreaks revenge and kills
him. Innocence betrayed, Rina faces the brutality of the post-war
London underworld - a world that teaches her the skill to kill...

Copy provided by the author in exchange
for an honest review.

Whenever I hear the name Hugh Fraser,
the very first thing that pops up in my mind is his very famous role
of Captain Hastings from my favorite TV series „Hercules Poirot“.
I was so delighted when I heard that he has written a book. But HARM
is nothing like HERCULES POIROT series. So who ever expected a new Agatha
Christie's novel must be very surprised. I am not using the word
'disappointed“ , because this book is far away from disappointing.

Meet Rina, modern and beautiful woman
with faces, a contract killer, a death angel. She is a stunning
woman, and men often mistake her beauty for stupidity. But she is far
away from stupid. Most of everything, she is tough and knows how to
survive. Life hasn't been easy for her. Men took advantages on her
since young age. They still do, but now she lets them do that, and
that's how she uses them.

Rina kills people for money, but she
kills bad people, not just anyone. She has a sense for justice. She
would never hurt an innocent person, enough harm has been done to
her. It all started when she was a teenager. Her father's business
partner rapes her many times. But when he tries to rape her
nine-years-old sister, she kills him. His brother blackmails her, she
has to murder another person for him. One act of violence triggers
another one, one murder leads to another. In the world of gangs where
local mafia rules the neighborhood, there is no going back.

The author has created a real kick-ass
heroine. We can observe Rina's life since her early childhood till
the present day. Rina is an anti-heroine. On one side, she kills
people for money and she fights like hell when trapped. On the other
side, she is in the search of little peace for herself far away from
man's violence. 'Cause she has had it enough. We can follow the
story of young Rina, a young girl full of hopes and dreams, all that
destroyed by the fear of the shadow of the man entering her bedroom.
Her mother is a person that I literally want to kill by myself, what
kind of mother allows someone to rape her daughters and not even
bother about it? Parallely, we follow Rina in the presence, chasing
her next target and in the same time trying to escape being a target.
He is not naive anymore, nor helpless at all. She fights not just for
her, but for every abused woman that comes along her way.

HARM is a story centered around an
assassin with a soul. Rina is a hell of a character. Fulfilled with
adrenaline, violence, sex and kick-ass moments, this story is
anything but boring. You might expect a nice old-fashioned murder
like I did, but you'll find yourself positively surprised by the
adrenaline rush that hits you from the very first page of the book.
My advice: Don't expect anything, just read! You will totally enjoy
this read!

Hugh Fraser is best known for playing
Captain Hastings in Agatha Christie's 'Poirot' and the Duke of
Wellington in 'Sharpe'.

His films include Patriot Games, 101
Dalmatians, The Draughtsman's Contract and Clint Eastwood's
Firefox. In the theatre he has appeared in Teeth'n'Smiles at the
Royal Court and Wyndhams and in several roles with the Royal
Shakespeare Company.

He has also narrated many of Agatha
Christie's novels as audio books. Harm is his first novel.